


Haram

by Dispatches (orphan_account)



Category: X-Men comics
Genre: Community: choc_fic, F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-05-10
Updated: 2010-05-10
Packaged: 2017-10-09 09:40:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,569
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/85807
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/Dispatches
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>For the first choc_fic challenge. Prompt #13: X-Men Comics, Dust/X-23: Sharing a bed. - Truth is an island.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Haram

**Author's Note:**

> "Haram" is an Arabic word that means both "forbidden" and "sanctuary". "Niqab" is the Arabic word for the face-covering veil Sooraya typically wears.

The man rampaging through the city's streets is some kind of magician, or thinks he is: he is waving a wand and shouting long, incomprehensible phrases as asphalt and concrete erupts around him. Sooraya turns to her dust form instinctively just as Noriko is yelling "Guys, the wand! Somebody get the wand before he -- "

\-- and then there is blackness, and a pounding in Sooraya's ears, and then nothing.

*

She wakes up with a surge of panic and the bitter taste of adrenaline in her mouth. "What -- "

"Easy," says Laura's voice from somewhere above her. Sooraya sits up, carefully, and opens her eyes. She's in a bed in some kind of cabin, small and cosy with a sheepskin rug on the floor and a fire crackling in the stove. From outside she can hear the sound of a blizzard, muffled by the thick walls.

Laura's looking down at her from beside the bed, frowning slightly, a kerosene lamp in her hand. "Are you all right?"

"I -- " Her niqab is gone, and she feels as naked without it as she always does, but Laura's tucked her up in the blankets from neck to toe, and besides, Laura is not some stranger, not a man with lecherous eyes. "I am fine. Where are we?"

"The northwest of Canada," says Laura, setting the lamp on a shelf and sitting down beside her on the bed. "That man dropped us down in the middle of a snowfield. I think he hoped we would freeze to death."

Sooraya shivers at the thought. She had never even seen snow up close before she came to America: snow was something that lingered at the top of high mountains, not something that fell from the sky. "How did you find this place?"

"I followed my nose. This is a summer cabin. Not in use this season."

"Ah." Sooraya wonders at the casual way Laura speaks of taking over someone else's house, as if it were nothing; wonders, too, at how easily her own qualms fade in the face of their need. She used to be so proper. "Did we... did you come far?" she asks, suddenly realising that Laura must have carried her through the snow.

"Fifty kilometres, three hundred metres."

"Fifty kilometres?"

Laura nods.

"Through the snow?"

Laura nods again.

"But you -- how did you not freeze to death?"

Laura shrugs. "I don't feel the cold like other people do. That is, I feel it, but. If it damages me, I just heal." Some of Sooraya's shock must be showing in her face, because Laura hastens to add "I was more worried about you. I put my coat on you for warmth, but whatever that man did to you knocked you unconscious. You've been out cold for hours."

At that, Sooraya laughs, a little hysterically, and Laura frowns for a second before she gets the joke and laughs too. It's not really that funny, but here they are, the two of them, alive and even comfortable when they should be a pair of frozen corpses somewhere so deep in the wilderness they would never even be found.

When the laughter fades, Laura gets up and puts more wood in the stove. "There is a radio," she says. "When the storm dies down, I will call for help."

"You should rest," Sooraya says softly, not expecting Laura to agree, even though there are shadows under her eyes and she's paler than usual.

Laura clenches her fists and unclenches them. "You need the bed."

It's neither a "yes" nor a "no", which is close enough to "yes" for Sooraya to turn back the blankets (shivering a little at the loss of warmth, for even with the fire burning, the cabin is cold) and to say "There is room here for both of us."

Laura's head jerks and she frowns, something painful and strange glittering in her eyes. Then she blinks and it's gone, replaced by the reserve she always wears, a niqab not made of cloth.

She takes off her boots with quick, efficient gestures, quenches the lamp, and gets into the bed without saying another word. Sooraya lies down on her side with her back to the wall. "Are you cold?" she whispers, not daring to speak aloud, although there is no one who can hear them.

For answer Laura shivers all over, and Sooraya reaches for her -- and she _is_ cold, so cold that Sooraya shrinks back for a moment before steeling herself and drawing Laura into her arms. "Body heat," she whispers, and her heart beats faster at the thought that Laura might pull away.

Laura lies stiff and awkward in the narrow bed, not shifting the way Sooraya expects her to shift, the way she'd shift herself just to get comfortable. Sooraya has to guide her with careful touches before Laura will relax, her face tucked under Sooraya's chin and her hands resting on Sooraya's waist. She is still shivering, her arms bare and rough with gooseflesh, and Sooraya rubs at them. "Do you think you can sleep?"

Laura inhales raggedly and shakes her head. Sooraya pulls the blankets tighter around them and starts to sing, half-whispering the words of a Pashto lullaby into Laura's ear.

As she sings, Laura grows still, draws closer, until they are curled around each other like twins in the womb. Sooraya finds herself stroking Laura's hair, just as her mother used to stroke hers if she was sick or frightened and needed comfort.

Laura had a mother once, too. Sooraya wonders whether Laura's mother ever sang to her, ever held her in her arms when she was hurt and told her everything would be all right -- thinks, for a bitter moment, that if she had, it would have been a lie. Nothing is all right in Laura's life, and it makes Sooraya's heart ache.

As she brings the lullaby to an end, Sooraya can hear Laura's breathing growing soft and slow; a sound that comforts her as much as her mother's singing once did. She drifts off to sleep with that sound in her ears, her hands resting in Laura's hair.

*

When she wakes, she feels warm and rested and _safe_ in a way that she hasn't felt since before she came to America. Some part of her expects that if she opens her eyes she will see the house she lived in as a child, before her father died and her mother was forced to flee the country; so she keeps them closed, twists a little in the blankets to pull them tight.

Wakefulness creeps up on her as she becomes aware of the warm body pressing against hers. She reaches out and touches skin, soft and smooth over hard-packed muscles. _Laura_.

She opens her eyes.

The cabin is lit once more by the lamp, so that she can see Laura's wide green eyes as they stare down into her own. Laura blinks, opens her mouth as if to speak, then shakes her head, her lip trembling with some emotion Sooraya can't name, the same emotion that's filling her eyes with tears. Sooraya reaches out to touch her cheek, and Laura leans into the touch, squeezing her eyes shut and inhaling deeply -- _my scent_, Sooraya thinks, _she's tasting my scent._ The thought makes her dizzy, and she reaches out with both hands, pulling Laura to her, needing to -- to _what_, she can't say, couldn't say with a gun to her head, but she knows it has something to do with this: Laura rubbing her face against her throat, burying her nose in her hair; alive, alive, and here, and with Sooraya, drinking her in as if she were the fountain of youth.

There's a moment when she wishes that the storm would go on for days, so that they could keep on breathing each other's air. But that is selfishness and she reproaches herself for it: even in a thought, she must not betray her friends, who need her and Laura as much as they need each other.

She stiffens at the thought of having to leave, and Laura pulls back and looks at her again. "I like your face," Laura says abruptly. Her voice is hoarse and though the lamplight is dim, Sooraya thinks she can see teartracks on her cheeks.

"I -- thank you," she says, and tries to remember if she's ever heard Laura say she likes anything. "You too. I like your face too," she whispers, and it feels like a secret so terrible it could destroy the world.

Laura lays her head on Sooraya's chest, and Sooraya can feel her heart pounding, so she knows Laura must be able to hear it. "Are you afraid?" Laura says, and Sooraya wants to say _yes_, but whatever is making her pulse race is not fear, or not only fear.

"No," she says, lifting a hand to stroke Laura's hair.

She knows that the storm will end soon, and they will go back to the mansion and their friends and their separate narrow beds, and hide their faces once more. But now they are here, and they are alone, and there is no veil between them, only the warmth of their bodies and the beating of their hearts and the distant howl of the wind, and what Sooraya fears most is that some day she may forget how it feels to hold Laura in her arms.

[end]

**Author's Note:**

> The lullaby Sooraya sings to Laura is [this one](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y8nhuwRMQp8) (link goes to Youtube video of a recording by Norwegian/Pakistani singer Deeyah).


End file.
